But this rather inglorious method of warfare did not altogether suit Captain Conyngham’s adventurous spirit, and time and again he wished for a brush with one of the king’s cutters before his crew and his stores were depleted by the manning of so many prizes. As yet he had found no occasion to use the long twelve-pounder. But the opportunity was soon to come, and the way it happened was this:
The Revenge was running short of water, and owing to the necessity of dividing her stores with some of the coasters that were provisioned for voyages of only one or two days’ duration, the crew was at last forced to accept half rations, and sailors will grumble quicker at this than at any form of dangerous hardship.
Once, forced by a hard blow, Conyngham had boldly made into the mouth of the English harbor of Ravenglass, in Lancashire, where of course he dared not go ashore, and owing to the presence of a British thirty-four-gun frigate he could not cut out any of the numerous fleet of merchant vessels by which he was surrounded. When the storm was over he sailed out of the harbor as boldly as he had entered it, and none of the English fleet imagined that the natty little craft that dropped anchor among them was the dreaded Yankee “pirate.”
But now to the adventure: The supply of water was growing less and less. It became an absolute necessity to fill the casks in some fashion, and also to procure some fresh provisions, for scurvy, the dreaded enemy of sailors of that day, had begun to appear--at least there were signs of it, and the crew were grumbling louder than ever. So Conyngham bethought him of his promise to pay a visit to the land of his birth; and after skirting the Isle of Man in a fruitless search for a safe landing-place or a well-provisioned prize, he crossed the Channel and entered the harbor of a little Irish fishing port (the name of which he fails to record in his log) about twenty miles or so to the north of the town and harbor of Wicklow.
[Illustration: The dreaded Revenge was lying in the harbor.]
Probably the fisher folk were simple and unsuspicious; mayhap they did not care to inquire closely into the mission of a polite fellow countryman who claimed to be a peaceable merchantman, for here Conyngham allowed his original nationality to be unmistakably plain if he did conceal his calling; or maybe it was the sight of the Spanish gold with which he paid for everything that blinded them; but they were eager and willing to help him to the things he wanted; and as many hands make light work, twelve hours sufficed to fill his casks with fresh water and his forehold with potatoes--the best cure for scurvy. Stores of various kinds to replace those he had sent to Spain were also taken on board.